A fine patterning on a surface may be performed when fabricating a hard disk drive medium, forming an antireflection film, providing a catalytic surface, and manufacturing a microchip, an optical device, or semiconductor device.
Patterned media for use in hard disk drives have been proposed for achieving a high recording density in magnetic storage devices. This patterning of the hard disk media (e.g., disk drive platters) to increase the storage density produces so called “bit patterned media” (BPM). By patterning a recording layer surface of a hard disk medium to have a fine uneven shape, a patterned medium can be obtained. In patterned media, the method used for forming a patterning mask is an important issue. It is known in the art that it is possible to use a self-assembly process to produce a periodic patterning mask.
A self-assembled lithography process using a diblock copolymer is a method that can produce a pattern with features from several nanometers (nm) to several tens of nm at a relatively low cost by using a microphase separation technique (generating phase-separated lamella, cylinders, sphere structures, or the like) using an annealing of a diblock copolymer. The finer the pattern that is formed on the hard disk medium, the higher the possible recording density.